Sociology education

• Functionalist view of education


  • Optimistic about the role of education for society
  • Believe education prepares people for their future roles
• New Right


  • Believe education system should run like a business and enable parents to have a choice to send their kid to school
  • Believe school gives chances to everyone
• New Right view of education


  • Marketisation is beneficial to the education system as it helps improve standards
• New Right thinkers


  Have been criticised for failing to acknowledge that when a choice is introduced not all students are able to utilise the choices available for example transport costs
• Pierre Bourdieu


  Middle class possess cultural capital and places them at an advantage, and the middle class controls the education system therefore putting working class students at a disadvantage
• Louis Althusser


  Education legitimises inequalities through subconsciously introducing a particular set of ideas, and is an ideological state apparatus through which the ruling class transmit their values
• Bowles and Gintis- education serves to reproduce the capitalist relations of production. Hierarchy extist in school and work. Day is in segments that resembles work
• Feminist view of education


  Education system perpetuates a patriarchal ideology leading girls into lower paid jobs, and women were being overlooked in girls' education
• Interpretivist view of education


  They don't regard education as neither positive or negative, for instance the way children are labelled and how it affects their education and later life and if it creates self-fulfilling prophecy
• Meritocracy


  Jobs and pay are allocated due to individual talent and achievements
• Durkheim


  Creating social solidarity and teaches specialist skills. This is done by the hidden curriculum and the actual curriculum
• Parsons

  • Meritocracy
  • Bridge between family and society
  • secondary socialisation
• Davis and Moore


  Role allocation - education allocate different students into different jobs
• Critisms of Marxist

  • lack of detailed research
  • tend to be deterministic
• Chubb and Moore

  • New right
  • failed the needs of disadvantaged grouos
  • school is inefficient to produce pupils with skills
  • private schools deliver higher quality education
• Critisms of new right

  • real cause of low educational standards is because of social inequalities and not the school
• Schutz- functionalist


  Developing human capital - provide trained employees
• eval- functionalist

  myth of meritocracy

  sees children’s as passive subjects

  hidden curriculum reinforce social inequality and patriarchy
• eval- Marxist

  Chubb and Moore - neglect on other social groups

  morrow and Torres - students create their own identities

  giroux - think that WC are passive subjects
• pupil identies - school


  archer - symbolic violence - violence to those who shape their identies around designer clothes of hyper feminised identity

  ball - ethnocentric curriculum

  reay - school environment
• formation of pupil subculture

  differentiation - teachers categorizing students such like streaming

  polarization - responding to differentiation by moving to one poles
• pupil subculture

  Mac and Ghail - pro and anti school subculture